Saturday, October 9, 2010

Fascinating insight into the grubby world of celebrity tabloids in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper tomorrow. The first edition is now on select newsagent shelves and inside the back cover, in The Insiders double page gossip column, is a half page story on Miranda Kerr. No, not a pregnancy update, but a (censored) topless image of an 18 year-old Kerr taken in 2002, together with the headline "Kerr's naked fury". The story goes on to feign outrage and outline how "an old friend" of Kerr's has "taken advantage" of her new-found celebrity to sell what are believed to be the first topless images of Kerr to a British tabloid for a "hefty" fee. The photographer is quoted as saying he previously refrained from selling the shots to a mens magazine because "they were too nice". So a Fleet Street tabloid is a far more tasteful alternative then? But while the photographer has got no problem with flogging eight year old topless images of teenage Kerr, he asked not to be named. Couple of points here.

First up, Kerr was 18 at the time and therefore a consenting adult.

She also reportedly signed a release form for the images in 2005.

Models do nude work all the time, some more than others. Obviously at 18 Kerr was not the celebrity that she is today and as far as frockwriter is aware, there is nothing embarrassing about the images. But there is of course no shortage of anecdotes involving the release of nude imagery of celebrities, taken years before, at a time when they were perhaps short of money, eager to get a legup in the industry or just simply plain naïve.

In 2007, Kerr's Victoria's Secret contract catapulted her to prominence in the international modelling business. But her relationship with Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom sent her into a totally different celebrity orbit - one that has dominated entertainment coverage in recent months, thanks to their marriage in July and the subsequent announcement of Kerr's pregnancy.

She calls the shots now, controls her image and, moreover, works for fees which would be a hell of a lot more than they were when she was an unknown Australian teenager.

Just like Lara Stone is a far bigger name in 2010 than she was as recently as 2008, when Stone posed for a series of topless images for Greg Lotus, which he sold to French Playboy this year. Stone has now taken legal action against Lotus. Legal sources say that in some jurisdictions, celebrities have publicity rights over their image.

Frockwriter can reveal that the photographer who took the shots of Kerr at 18 is Australian Jasper Glavanics and that the images are part of a portfolio of images of Kerr that Glavanics uses on his website to promote his work (as seen in the above screen cap).

Frockwriter's well-placed sources report that the UK rights to the images were offered to British tabloid News of the World (which, like The Sunday Telegraph, is also published by News Ltd); that Glavanics' anonymity was part of the terms and conditions of any photo sales; and that distributor Tito Media also asked Kerr's camp to match the News of the World's (four figure) British pounds price, to get them off the market. The bullying of deep-pocketed high-profilers into coughing up so as to disappear potentially embarrassing imagery is a not at all uncommon practice in the celebrity universe.

This evening, Glavanics told frockwriter that the images will not be appearing in News of the World because Kerr had purchased them - a fee that would have been over and above whatever Glavanics/Tito pocketed from The Sunday Telegraph, which discloses that it paid a "nominal fee" for the photographs (with Tito Media's watermark clearly visible on one of two shots published).